Rope has long been stored, displayed and dispensed in retail stores on spools rotatably supported on racks. Spools have been displayed on tree-like racks having a central support and several spool support rods extending from opposite sides of the central support. However, as rope is depleted from the spools on one side of the rack they often became unbalanced causing them to have the tendency of toppling over.
Racks have also been used that have two juxtaposed rods on which a spool is supported with its end flanges rotatably nested between the rods. A problem encountered with this design is that light spools of rope tend to ride over the forward rod as they are rotated. Also, as the flanges of the spools wear with use, they become more difficult to rotate.
Racks have also been designed that have a frame which supports several elongated rods one above the other. Each rod is journaled through a spool of rope so as to rotate about the rod. The frame of these racks typically has a depth slightly larger than the diameter of the spool. With these, stores having deep shelf widths experience the lost of valuable shelf space due to the depth of the rack being substantially smaller than the width of the shelf. This difference causes a large portion of the shelf to remain vacant due to the impracticability of displaying merchandise in front of or behind the racks.
It thus is seen that a need remains for a rack for displaying and dispensing spooled rope in a more space efficient manner. It is to the provision of such that the present invention is primarily directed.